[Leadership] Correlation between trust, empowerment, and loyalty

Leadership can come from trusting team members and giving required empowerment to them when they make a decision. Leader sometimes just give their right to their team members about decision making, and try to avoid their responsibilities. Wrong empowerment may let the work less efficient, and make the customers dissatisfied. 

(Translated in: Link)

I have experienced about an upset situation. A leader told me. "There would be an important meeting tomorrow?" "Participate in the meeting well and report it" a few minutes later...

He said "What is the meeting for tomorrow?" "Is that an so important meeting, right?" "If so, I am going to be there as well."

What do you feel in this talking? Does it seem like interest in the work or not to believe in his subordinate?

If it is a kind of interest in the work, it is too much somehow and if it is kind of unbelievable about an subordiante, it can be also a kind of stereotype about the leader.

Anyway, if the leader want to do it like this, he should check what the meeting is for and how it is important before he make his subordinate participate there.

In other word, if it is such an important thing, he must make a decision before he make his subordinate do or ask something.

When you already give some rights to your follower, inconsistent behavior like this makes your followers upset and disappoint of you.

A leader can think that If some works are important, I'll do it and you just deal with easy work. By the way, how can you let the people have a common idea about the importance of the work.

Who can define the importance of the work and what is the criterion for this?

If you don't have any ideas about this, please don't give the rights for the work for sure.

When you give the rights to your subordinates improperly, it can be related with a disatisfaction. If the leader admit all the problems instead of them, that's ok but you know mostly leaders don't want to do that.

It is very hard for leaders to catch all things in working-level but they hardly believe their subordinates as well.

The better leaders have their own opinions for making a decision, but usually they're just waiting for the decision until their subordinates give some good ideas, or they just have them make a decision instead of himself.

When you make a decision, that means you must have responsibilities for your decision. That's why it's always difficult to do that and people consider many alternatives and try to find some reasons to persuade other people.

Therefore if a leader can't do this rightly, it's really better to let your subordinates do that for the group.

I have experienced that I couldn't solve the problems because a worker doesn't have enough right to solve it. At that time I was waste of time until I can call to a manager like an executive. It makes customers irritated and it can continue to customers' dissatisfaction. It can't see with your eyes but you know this is really bad for your organization. (As far as I know, in call center, fast engaging is one of the most important things because you can reduce customer's dissatisfaction and the cost for operating the center.)

Giving your rights to your subordinates makes them to have responsibilities for the decision somewhat, and this can encourage to work and respect their leader naturally.

When you do this, you should be sure that you must not make them frustrate due to your unnecessary interference. Interference before you think about the problems enough will make them not trust their decisions by themselves, and you'll make chilling effect.

Think about what you are raising your children. When they wear their shoes improperly, will you say to them that it is wrong every time? In that case, they can be correct but they also lose their opportunities to fix it by themselves. Can you think that they also grow up very well without your attention in this case?

Some leaders just say that they are worried about the problems that come from their subordinates because they just gave rights to make a decision. By the way, If you decided to give rights to them, that's your problem and surely you should take the risk about the fails. You can think why I have to take all responsibilities even if I didn't do that for the company. I'd like to ask you what you are in your group, by the way. Exactly you are a leader of the group and you need to think about the management of the group as well like your subordinates are always thinking of their works all the time. Consideration and management about the members of your group are your role originally. Take off your burden from their works. You don't have to think about something in working-level too much. If you really want to interfere their works, please be a member not a leader. In that case, you can be a very good member of your group for sure.

Don't think that you are going to lose your position when you give rights to your subordinates. Don't think about what you can do make a decision all the time and for every work. As you already know, you are not a Superman. You already have a lot of works for supporting when they make a decision, and you can manage it. I think this seems to be the real servant leadership.